Tuesday, 3 November 2015

Day 4: Announcing Singapore / Frankfurt Tie-up

Asian Books
Blog is based in Singapore. During the Singapore
Writers Festival, (SWF) which is on now, and runs through until November 8,
daily posts will offer a flavour of events in the Lion City.

So: Day 4...

As part of
SWF, The Singapore Book Publishers Association (SPBA), and the Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) are jointly running a 2-day publishing symposium. It started yesterday, November 2, and continues today, November 3. The symposium brings together authors,
publishers, and booksellers from right across South East Asia and beyond.

The first
morning was mainly devoted to the latest trends in book marketing and
promotion, with in-depth exploration of innovations from developed and developing
markets. There were workshop for both authors and publishers. I popped in to
each session.

Publishing
industry commentator Porter Anderson was advising authors they should consider
themselves as brands, and giving advice on how they can use social media to
sell their wares. He cited Stephen King as an author who'd managed to establish
himself as a successful brand.

Meanwhile, Sangram
Surve, the founder-director of Think WhyNot, a "cross-media strategic
consulting and implementing agency" based in Mumbai, was leading
publishers in a speed marketing exercise: the 50 or so publishers present were
divided into four groups, each group was given a book, and told to come up with
marketing ideas in 10 minutes flat.

But just as
interesting as the formal sessions, were the informal conversations that took
place on their fringes. The keynote opening address was given by Dr Juergen
Boos, President, FBF.

Worldwide, Frankfurt is the publishing industry's
most important marketplace for the buying and selling of rights; it is attended by publishers of all types - educational, professional, academic, general trade - from right across the globe.

As the crowd
was milling after the symposium's opening, I asked Juergen if a tie-up between
Frankfurt Book Fair, and a rights fair in Singapore, was in the pipeline. He
pointed out that the publishing symposium was proof FBF, and SPBA are already working
together. This was fair enough, but I pressed him on whether a more
comprehensive rights fair was in the works. Juergen confirmed that indeed
it was: "We are discussing holding a regional event in Singapore, not just
for books, classically defined, but for film, games, all types of content.
We are working with regional partners - publishing associations - right
across the South East Asia region. The Singapore Book Publishing Association is
our local partner here in Singapore. This is where the event will be held.
We plan to treat Singapore as a media hub."

We were then
joined by Peter Schoppert, Director, National University of Singapore Press,
and President, SBPA. He and Juergen agreed that South East Asia was an
interesting, growing and important market for publishers, and that even tiny
Singapore has a bigger population than some Scandinavian countries. Peter went
on to say that Singapore and Frankfurt have been talking for years, but that a
rights-fair-cum-media-event will definitely take place in 2016: all that has to
be agreed is the date; the event may or may not be linked with SWF. As
Juergen nodded in agreement, Peter said a formal announcement would be forthcoming shortly.